Oxygen enriched breathing systems such as are found in hospitals and aircraft use as oxygen sources bottled high pressure gas, liquid oxygen, solid oxygen generators, commonly referred to as "candles", or fractionalized air. It can become critical that the user know the oxygen concentration in the breathing system to avoid a catastrophic event such as could occur in high alitude aircraft.
Air fractionalizing is normally accomplished by alternating the flow of high pressure air through each of two beds of molecular sieve material such as a zeolite. This process is identified as the pressure swing adsorption technique. Systems employing this technique can be made to produce either a nitrogen or an oxygen enriched effluent based on the type of zeolite chosen. Some zeolites adsorb oxygen and others nitrogen. In an oxygen enriching system, a zeolite which adsorbs nitrogen would be selected.
These same adsorption characteristics of a zeolite can be used in monitoring the effluent concentrations of product gas from an air fractionalizing system or any other source.